Submit a ticket:

Creating Custom Certificates

Absorb LMS uses the Portable Document Format (PDF) format for it's certificates. Typically, these certificates are created for Absorb clients as a part of our onboarding process, but we're also happy to help with small changes here and there should you need them. For these, feel free to submit a support ticket with your request(s). However, if you have access to Adobe Acrobat, or another PDF form editor, this guide will outline how to build your own certificates that pull user data stored in the LMS.

Creating A Certificate

While you will need to add form fields to your certificate later, you can create the certificate in a variety of other programs. The form fields will pull data from the LMS for the user that is viewing them, and creating your own auto-populating certificates is as easy as copying over the fields from the PDF (called Absorb Custom Certificates Client Info.pdf) available for download a the bottom of this article. To create your own certificate design you will want to ensure the following prior to adding the fields in a PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat:

Below are the basic steps to create form fields. The idea is to simply copy a form field from the test certificate and paste it onto the clients. Please note that you will require the full version of Adobe Acrobat, and not the Reader version.

Also open the certificate you will be making changes to/adding form fields.

On the top left there is a Tools menu, navigate there and select Prepare Form

You'll be taken back to the pdf with the form fields displayed. Make sure you're on the Absorb test certificate. You'll notice on the right is the page with all the form fields listed.

To add a new form field, select the form field​ from the Absorb certificate, it should turn blue, ctrl-C to copy it, navigate to the certificate you are working with and ctrl-P to paste it onto the new certificate

You can modify form field properties by right clicking it and selecting properties. Here you can adjust the name, appearance, position, etc.

Note this only works for PDFs.

Custom Fields

Absorb LMS allows users to set up their own custom user fields to populate with custom user data. The data in these fields can also be passed to your PDF certificate using the following form field:

LearnerCustomFieldNameNoSpaces

Where FieldNameNoSpaces will be the name that you have input for that custom field (with any spaces in that name stripped out of the form field). Please note that if changes are made in the LMS to that custom field name, your certificates will need to be updated to reflect them.

Date Format

Please note that the date format that appears on certificates will match that the same format as determined in your Portal Settings under the Defaults tab. You can select from YYYY-MM-DD, DD/MM/YYYY, or MM/DD/YYYY from the drop-down menu labelled Report Date Format. This will also update the date format within your reports, so please be sure you are comfortable with your changes prior to saving the new format.